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This is a modern supercomputer. It is actually a cluster of numerous computers that are linked together to make them far more powerful.
Click on image for full size Courtesy of UCAR Digital Image Library

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What is a Supercomputer?

Some scientific problems and processes are so complex that you need SUPERCOMPUTING power to tackle them! Just what is a supercomputer?

A supercomputer is a computer that is among the largest, fastest or most powerful of the computers available. As of this writing (late 2007) the fastest supercomputers operate on the order of more than 200 teraflops (that's computer lingo for trillions of operations per second!). And supercomputers are being improved all the time! Soon they will operate on the petaflop-scale (that's one quadrillion operations per second!).

Supercomputers are used to tackle problems that are very complex or problems that would be messy to deal with in the real physical world because they are dangerous, deal with incredibly small things are incredibly big ones! Here's some examples:

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